Last week saw the start of “BUDS” – a new monthly NHEHS Community Initiative. If you’re wondering what toast, poetry and mosaics have in common, then read on!

The programme is aimed at Building Understanding & Developing Skills in Gifted & Talented Year 5 pupils from local primary schools.

In order to stretch and extend their learning through an ambitious programme focusing on Science, English and Creative Thinking, the 30 pupils from five different schools took part in a myth-busting Science session investigating Murphy’s Law – does toast always fall butter side down? They then explored the expressive spoken nature of Poetry – hearing as well as speaking in different rhymes and meters. The pupils also researched how Mosaics could be used to develop Creative Thinking and started planning to create their own mosaics.

NHEHS Assistant Head Colin Henderson said of the first session, “it was so pleasing to see how the pupils interacted with each other, bringing their collective intelligence and problem solving abilities to challenges designed to stretch and extend their learning.”

A key aspect of the programme is collaborating with pupils from other schools and there was much evidence of pupils developing their soft skills as well as becoming more confident in expressing their ideas over the course of the morning.

Over the course of the next two terms the pupils will come together on a monthly basis to continue to work together, and if this first session was anything to go by not only will they be developing a wider range of intellectual abilities, but their interpersonal skills and confidence will also be sky high – they were all a real credit to their schools!

We look forward to welcoming them again in February for the second BUDS Saturday morning.